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Our album of the week (2nd September 2011)
...according to our Phil on Fri 02 Sep, 2011.
Woo! New Barn Owl is always a reason to celebrate. Though it's hardly celebratory music.... it's about as far away from party music as you can get to be honest.... so we've established Barn Owl ain't a party band. They're a band to sit in on your own and listen to while you're having a bleak moment or two. They do make some of the most moving desolate sounding soundscapes though I've ever heard and Lost In the Glare solidifies their rich catalogue (the Elm and Evan Caminiti solo projects are all totally awesome too). The music here was recorded throughout 2011 at varying sessions and it was recorded by Phil Manley. The album starts with a sparse, very typical sounding Barn Owl tune with feedback and Porras/ Caminiti's guitars harmoniously vying for attention over celestial sounding drones. The thing I like about Barn Owl is the fact that it makes me feel like I'm in a scolding hot desert with no one around me and there's no other band who come close to doing a similar thing. By the time you hit track 2 and you're all melty you've got some drums to contend with which are kind of ploddy but they're covered in the fighting guitars... kind of reminds me of Codeine but with a bit more sludge about it... Track 3 and we're back in the desert again... I get bored of doing track by track things so I'm gonna stop there actually. I will say this is the most complete Barn Owl album I've heard, the styles are slightly more varied. What makes it though is the epic guitar playing and the soundscapes they create.... this is (as they say in my house) 'the shit'.
Lost in the Glare is Barn Owl's second album for Thrill Jockey, and follows quickly on the heels of their acclaimed 12" EP "Shadowland." Like "Shadowland" the album was recorded to tape by Phil Manley in San Francisco's Lucky Cat Studios. Lost in the Glare is made up of material composed over the course of a year and recorded in sessions throughout the winter of 2011. At the heart of the album's sound is the dual guitar interaction between Caminiti and Porras, a spiraling web of interlocking gestures that give way to bone rattling, monolithic progressions and dusty drifts. The mostly finger picked guitars weave in and out of each other in precise movements that recall the hypnotic influence of American minimalists.
The harmonium that was prevalent on previous recordings has been replaced on Lost in the Glare with the undulations of a Farfisa organ. The songs here are deep, cosmic excursions. Rich in dynamics, the record possesses a transcendental tone through both a densely layered combination of electric and acoustic instruments and walls of melting amplifiers and feedback alchemy. The lines between strict structure and ordered chaos blur as third-eye opening e-bowed drones explode like beams of light and corrode into crumbling distortion, baking tones that sizzle like brittle bones left in the desert sun.
Between rhythmic, turning strums that recall Saharan twilight, radiant synth swells and choral clusters that echo the desolation of deep space, the duo's sound has no doubt ascended from it's desert-rock roots into a new, beaming realm. Evocative as they are, the sounds here aren't easy to tie down to particular imagery. A myriad of influences from blues and raga to the guitar style of Northern Mali most often associated with the Touareg people meld into a new universal sound that can only be described as cosmic and sublime.
In addition to guitars and organ, Lost in the Glare features Juno 60, manipulated cassette tapes, tanpura and gong played by Michael Elrod (The Alps, Date Palms), Steve Dye on bass clarinet (Portraits), and the crucial contribution of drummer Jacob Felix Heule. Heule's playing is paradoxically heavy and commanding, subtle and elegant. Morphing from hypnotic processions to abstract ritualistic clatter and orchestral swells, his addition to Barn Owl takes the sound to new heights.
Just returned from a month long tour of Europe with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, San Francisco-based Barn Owl are gearing up for some US dates in support of Lost in the Glare.
"Their latest siphon from the infinite abyss is a blackened earth opus to a dead land. In an age when most artists conjure fleeting whims, Barn Owl carve epics out of ash." - Raven Sings the Blues/Altered Zones
"Barn Owl take off into deep space and musically touch base with John Fahey, John Rose and Pandit Pran Nath, together with a celestial symphonic orchestra and chorus" - The Wire
"Dusty passages of guitar reverberate into the distance, while wind-swept drones bring to mind desolate plains and dry mountains." - Dusted
"a tonal constellation of electricity and wordless chorale" - Mojo
(4 stars, No.6 on 2010 Underground Albums of the Year List)
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Norman Records,
Unit 20, Croydon House,
Croydon Street,
Leeds,
LS11 9RT, UK.
Tel/fax: (+44) 0113 245 4399
Email: phil@normanrecords.com
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